Do
they actually think the general public has the IQ of freshly
cut lettuce, or is it that they actually believe the vapid
tripe they spew day after day in hopes that their vague emotionalism,
vacuous rhetoric and unbridled fanaticism will triumph over
logic and facts?

In
recent
news from the People's Republic of Maryland,
it appears legislators have implemented a new strategy to
push the so-called "assault weapons" ban in the
state. In a frothing state of hoplophobic frenzy, Montgomery
County Executive Douglas M. Duncan addressed a crowd of freedom's
enemies, who waved a replica of a Bushmaster rifle outside
the Montgomery County Courthouse. "A real version of
that weapon terrorized our community. I can think of no greater
memorial to the sniper victims than to get this law passed."

Any
rational human being would immediately question the sanity
of such comments.

What
about the two men who pulled the trigger on that rifle, Mr.
Duncan? Do they bear any responsibility for terrorizing your
community, or did the evil gun make them do it?

Are
you aware that they obtained this weapon illegally, despite
laws already in place designed to prevent them from doing
so?

How
many criminals do you know who will obey your already ineffective
gun laws?

And
how is violating the Constitutional right of law-abiding citizens
to keep and bear arms a fitting tribute to those killed by
criminals in a mad shooting spree last year?

But
hey -- People like Duncan don't care about logic. They don't
care about common sense, constitutional rights or freedom.
They want to hurl inane emotional statements and scare the
citizenry into trusting them, into believing that they, the
politicians, know how to protect them, how to safeguard them
against violence and how to keep them from harm. They want
to increase terror in hopes that the mindless children who
cast votes in their direction year after year after year,
grow ever more reliant on them and their ineffective laws.
And they want to appeal to the people's sense of justice,
hero-worship and anger to foster an ever-growing dependence
on the politicians' sense of right and wrong, instead of their
own.

Nowhere
is this more clear than Maryland's recent push for a ban on
"assault" weapons. Not only are the politicians
using a strategy of emotional blackmail to bring about their
desired tyrannical agenda, but they are also using lies. The
latest idiocy pushed by the enemies of freedom is that FBI
statistics show that one out of every five police officers
killed between 1998 and 2001 was killed by an "assault"
weapon.

I
accessed the FBI's
Uniform Crime Report for 2001. I found that
in 2001 there was a total of 142 police officers killed in
the United States and its territories. Handguns were used
in 42 of these killings, 11 were shot by rifles and 4 were
killed by shotgun fire. In total 61 police officers were killed
by gun fire of any kind in 2001 - less than half. Rifles accounted
for 7.7 percent of those killings.

The
period between 1992 and 2001 saw a total of 643 police officers
killed. Of these killings, 594 were slain with firearms of
any kind, and 111 were killed using a rifle of any kind -
17 percent. It's not one in five, as the gun grabbers claim,
and, of course, as usual, they fail to paint a complete picture.

When
the UCR refers to rifles, it does not differentiate between
.22 Caliber, .223 Caliber, 30 Caliber, .30-06 Caliber, or
7.62x39 Millimeter. It does not differentiate between the
type of rifle, its manufacturer or any of the attributes that
might make this weapon into an "assault" weapon
by the anti-gunners' definition. There is no distinction.
The gun grabbers are apparently happy to simply lump every
rifle into the "assault" weapon category. And why
not? It helps their cause, doesn't it?

"Using
the FBIís annual report, Law Enforcement Officers Killed
and Assaulted, I found several incidents in 1994 for which
the HCI data was inaccurate: the wrong model gun was listed,
and the real gun was not banned by the 1994 federal 'assault
weapon' law; the gun was taken from a police officer; or
the murder was perpetrated by a police officer against another
officer".

"The logical implication of HCIís counting crimes by
polices or crimes with guns taken from police," Kopel
continues, " is that police officers should not be
allowed to own guns with magazines of more than 10 rounds."

Facts
are these:

In
the period from 1992 to 2001, the vast majority of police
officers were killed by handgun fire.

"Assault"
weapons are not the primary weapon of choice for criminals,
as they are not easily concealable - a major consideration
for those who are intent on committing crimes.

Further,
a 1996 study
by Jeffrey A. Roth and Christopher S. Koper of the Urban Institute
of the Urban Institute in Washington, DC "found no strong
evidence to date that licensed dealers have increased 'off
the books' sales of assault weapons in secondary markets and
concealed them with false stolen gun reports. Stolen gun reports
for assault weapons did increase slightly after the ban took
effect, but by less than reported thefts of unbanned large-capacity
semiautomatic handguns, which began rising well before the
ban."

"The
lack of an increase in stolen gun reports," Roth and
Koper continue, "suggests that so far, the large stock
of grandfathered assault weapons has remained largely in dealersí
and collectorsí inventories instead of leaking into the secondary
markets through which criminals tend to obtain guns."

"At
best," the study states, "the assault weapons
ban can have only a limited effect on total gun murders,
because the banned weapons and magazines were never involved
in more than a modest fraction of all gun murders. Our best
estimate is that the ban contributed to a 6.7 percent decrease
in total gun murders between 1994 and 1995, beyond what
would have been expected in view of ongoing crime, demographic,
and economic trends. However, with only one year of post-ban
data, we cannot rule out the possibility that this decrease
reflects chance year-to-year variation rather than a true
effect of the ban."

Additionally,
consider the following: in 1992, two years prior to the insidious
"Assault" weapons Ban of 1994, there were no police
homicides using "assault" weapons. None.

Furthermore
a November 2001 Bureau of Justice Statistics report states
that less than 2 percent of federal and state inmates reported
carrying a fully automatic or military-style semi-automatic
firearm. This is after the implementation of the 1994 ban.

Meanwhile,
a similar study done in 1991, prior to the "Assault"
weapons ban, states that less than one percent of inmates
reported carrying such a weapon.

What
does the above information tell you? It tells you that not
only has the "Assault" Weapons ban of 1995 been
woefully ineffective, but that from the time of its inception,
crimes with "assault" weapons actually
increased slightly, instead of having the desired
effect of a downward trend.

And
what of the lying, whining, petulant politicians who consistently
push these inane measures upon an unsuspecting, ignorant populace?

They
would do well to remember that eventually, their policies
will come home to roost. There are millions of us who know
the truth, who understand their insidious goals, who read,
study and spend our lives exposing these lying, misleading,
power-hungry scum. We, the proverbial frogs, are getting smarter
by the day. We are beginning to realize that the water temperature
in our little pools is rising, and many of us are jumping
out. Let's just hope it's not too late.

Nickiis a US Army veteran, who spent nearly four years in Frankfurt,
Germany on active duty at the American Forces Network. She
is a former radio DJ and news anchor and a Featured Writer
and Newslinks Director for Keepandbeararms.com. She is also
a former contributing editor to the National Rifle Association's
newest monthly magazine, Women's Outlook and writes occasionally
for the Libertarian Party. She resides in Virginia with her
family. We are also proud to have Nicki as regular contributor
to Armed Females of America.